Together, your group walks cautiously into the factory, with Wayne taking point. His arms sweep left and right as soon as you enter, but everything remains quiet. Mouse directs from the middle, pointing your whole group along the wall, eyes all trained on the surroundings until you reach the main factory floor once more.

Looking through the window into the packed machinery behind, Gardenia whistles appreciatively. “Never seen anything quite like that...”

Everyone does a slow circuit around the edges of the room, checking every angle. There's a broken section of the eastern wall, big enough to get a frame through. You don't remember that being here last time. “Must be how they got in,” Takashi notes, sizing it up with his hands. “Keep looking.”

There isn't much else, except for a pile of human-sized debris in the northeast corner of the huge room. but everything still seems fine, so you eventually backtrack.

“We didn't check these side-paths last time,” Mouse explains while pointing them out. There are two, right near the entrance you came through, both leading off toward the western side of the building.

You all head down the one closer to the bulk of the factory. It's a mostly bare corridor, lighting overhead slightly more sparse. At the far end, there appears to be a lot of colors mixed together, though you can't make out the details at a distance. So you all walk, until another room opens up, and you can't make out what lies inside.

The whole place is stacked high with metal containers, blocking the way. Large by human standards, a single container reaches your knees. They look much like shipping containers, but they're square rather than oblong. There are multiple colors, mismatched greens, oranges, and blues, in no pattern you can discern at a glance.

Of course, the issue is that they're stacked to double your height, so your squad can't even see past the first ones at the entrance. You can only assume, based on the section of ceiling overhead, that the room continues further in, presumably with more containers inside. When you take a moment to go over the readings from your scanner, it's clear the ion damage did it no favors, being even more scrambled with static than before that does seem to be the case.

“Some kind of... storage room?” Gardenia suggests. “My radar's picking up more containers inside.”

“Same,” Mouse confirms. Tendou nods, but doesn't speak up himself.

“How much of this you think we can use?” Wayne wonders, walking over to the pile. You can't see from behind him, but you can tell he opens his cockpit to reach out and bang on the side of a red one. It gives a dull metallic reverberation. “Must have something in it!” he calls loudly to be heard by everyone, before returning to his cockpit.

“Ah, look,” Mouse speaks up, pointing out a narrow gap between some of the stacked containers, wide enough for humans to walk through. “We could check it on foot.” She turns to look at you while speaking for some reason. That makes Tendou show a troubled, awkward expression, even though he grins.

The interaction puzzles you momentarily, before you remember how, despite her warnings, he went into the factory on-foot during your first visit to get the doors open. She must be referencing that.

Unaware of all that, Takashi's voice comes through next. “Hmm...” he hums in thought briefly. “No need. It doesn't look like a Hex could get in here. Let's keep going.” Everyone confirms, and you all turn around.

It only takes a minute to backtrack, turning into the other long passage. You all have to pause briefly at the intersection though, as a small cleaning robot buzzes past, bumping around your feet and continuing on its way.

“Saw one of those last time too,” Mouse explains, pointing out the small doors nearby where you saw one disappear. They're too small for you to fit through though.

“How could it possibly still be operational?” Gardenia questions.

No one responds for some time, so Takashi waves the team forward again. You turn into another hall, similar to the last. This one has only the single dividing wall between it and the front door into the factory – in fact, you can tell the shape of that entrance hall, from here because there's a small corner where that entry hall ends, and this one expands. That must mean the left hand wall is the building's outer wall.

Then the hall narrows down, about the same distance as the storage room. So this one must be tucked around and behind that, at the very southwest corner of the building. It only gives you the room to walk with two frames side by side, so you move to the back of the group to take up the rear.

Considering everything you've seen, you mock up the layout of the building with some basic graphics. It's rough and definitely not entirely to scale, with some of the walls being assumptions, but you display it alongside your radar map nonetheless. You even color it in a bit to show which areas you've checked so far.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Factory Map [https://i.imgur.com/DTubbX0.jpg]

Tendou considers the image briefly, with a small sound of agreement and a nod. And then you reach the room, immediately proving some of your guesses wrong. It turns out this is a rather small room, with a northern wall only a short way in. So, perhaps the shape of the storage room – or perhaps the whole west side of the building – isn't what you expected.

While you consider that, the pilots deal with the more important aspect of this room: the contents. Apparently, this is where they stored ray frames. There are seven of them. All Bogatyr models, lined up against that northern wall.

They stand, stock still and in visibly pristine condition – as if they never moved, ever since they day they were built. The mottled, forest green paint coating their exteriors isn't even faded. The only thing on them is a thick layer of dust. So, the cleaning robots can't climb, apparently.

The team shuffles into the room, all weapons trained on the silent frames.

“MK 1's,” Mouse reports. Everyone waits, like they expect the motionless rays to jump to life at any moment. Which... they actually might, you suppose. They have the AI module required after all. It still seems strange though – the thought that they could sit here for decades, only to have the Hex take over now that you're watching.

Of course, you can't just wait forever. “Come on, let's disable those AI modules,” Takashi instructs. Taking small, careful steps closer, most of the group circles around the one on the right end of the line, closest to the room's entrance. You slide over, near the wall, standing close to the Bogatyr's side.

Only Wayne stays back, guns leveled at the rest.

“Mouse, you got it?” Takashi asks, and she nods. She steps in close, watches the unmoving frame for a few seconds, then raises her shroud and opens the cockpit. One hand holding on to her own hatch, she leans out, and presses the manual release on the Bogatyr's cockpit.

At that exact moment-

“Argh!” she grunts, when the frame jolts, the small movement easily enough to smash her tiny human hand and send her reeling back into her cockpit.

By the time you're grabbing onto the suddenly moving Bogatyr and Mouse's Arctic Fox is flopping over backward from its pilot landing across the control panel, Takashi is already there. He shoves the plasma saber into the Bogatyr's now-open cockpit and a single flash makes it go still once more.

“Mouse, you alright?!” he shouts. It takes some time – and some cursing – before she responds.

“Still alive. Hand hurts like hell though. I... urgh...” she groans, “don't think anything's broken at least.”

“Talk about awful timing...” Gardenia comments, hissing through her teeth at the thought.

After a small sigh, Takashi says, “Well, good news, the AI is disabled. Bad news, I probably took out the reactor with it. I hate to ask, but...”

“Yeah, I know,” Mouse responds, still with pain in her voice. “These things are worth a fortune. But still...”

“U-uh, maybe I could try?” Tendou suddenly volunteers.

“Do you even know what to do?” Mouse asks – not a real question, since the answer is obvious.

“I... think I can guess some of it, I'd just need some help with the details?” he responds, staring up while taking in the roof of your own cockpit, studying the layout of the components.

You do have some info among your own schematics for where your own module resides, but that wouldn't necessarily translate to the Bogatyr's. You display the relevant info anyway, which he takes in at a glance before returning to studying the canopy of electronics.

“...Guess?” Mouse comes back across comms, mimicking your own thoughts through her tone. “Gardenia, you've got some idea, right?”

“Mm, sort of, but... hey, if he wants to take a shot at it, I say we let him.”

“You just don't want to stick your own neck out,” Wayne suddenly criticizes her with a chuckle,” glancing over from the rest of the motionless frames.

“Duh!” she barks back. “Of course I don't.”

“We're wasting time,” Takashi finally cuts them off. “The longer we stand around, the more chance we get more Hex. “Strider, I guess you're up.”

“R-right...” Tendou responds gulping and shaking a little. You circle around Mouse and the downed Hex, to stand a short distance from the next one in line. While visibly readying himself, he mutters, “Oh,” then begins digging through the canvas bag stuffed under his pilot seat.

Tendou pulls out a couple pale blue blobs. That stuff is... reactor fuel? He stuffs it in his pockets without any comment. What in the world is that for? Not wanting to interrupt him, you don't question him about it, and let him lean in, pushing you forward.

Cockpit opening, you step up to the next motionless Bogatyr in line. Tendou hangs out of the cockpit, reaches out, then quickly slaps the cockpit release, like this one is going to move too. The hatch hisses and swings aside, allowing him to jump the small gap.

“This is fine, this is fine,” he keeps saying to himself as he sits down in the seat and looks up.

“You alright, Strider?!” Mouse asks, shouting out from her own cockpit for him to hear.

“Doing great!” he yells back. It sounds like he's almost panicking. Even so, he's already reaching up to dig through the electronics above him.

“So, you should see a panel above you, probably labeled 'access.'”

“'Access?'” Tendou asks, obviously confused.

“Yeah.”

“What does that even...” He's looking back and forth the whole time, shaking his head. “I don't see anything.”

“What do you mean, you don't see anything?”

“I don't see anything written in here,” he explains, pushing things aside one after another, rapidly checking each of them with an intense gaze.

“Are these ones different than usual?” she wonders anxiously. “It should be in Russian,”

“What is 'Russian?'”

There is the shortest of pauses, before every other pilot shouts, “What?!” in unison.

Right as the Bogatyr starts to move on its own.